CAPshift

[janetb]

Dear Skrommel,

I just found your CAPshift and am delighted with it---something I always wanted! But as someone who does not know anything about scripting, I have two questions:

1. How can I make it open at Startup?
2. For Settings, I only get an .ini file, which is Greek to me....:-(....Do you have to know scripting to set settings?

Forgive me if this site is only for folks who know how to program....

Thanks for any help!
Janet

[ewemoa]

I'm not Skrommel, but may be the following will be of some use.

1. How can I make it open at Startup?

-janetb (April 12, 2010, 04:24 AM)

Does the following sound like your question?

  http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/6085

May be one or some of the answers provided will help -- please mention whether they do or not.

2. For Settings, I only get an .ini file, which is Greek to me....:-(....Do you have to know scripting to set settings?

As far as I understand, unless you are not satisfied with CAPshift's default behavior, there is no need to modify the settings.

However, the following are my guesses as to what the settings affect (this summary is based on reading the comments in the settings file and direct experimentation).

capslockidle=120

Roughly speaking, this setting represents the number of seconds to wait before turning off CapsLock (assuming it was already in an "on" state) when the keyboard is idle.  The default value is 120, but it appears you can set it to anything between 0 and 999 inclusive.  However, if the value is set to 0, CapsLock is not automatically turned off -- at least this is how it seemed to me when I tried a value of 0

showstatus=1

This setting appears to control the displaying of at least two things.  The first is the balloon message which appears above the tray icon for CAPshift.  The balloon message seems to indicate which keys are currently in an "on" state.  The second is the display of a count-down timer indicating how much time is left before the key being pressed switches state (e.g. going from on to off or going from off to on).

The default value for the setting is 1 which means that the two things are displayed.  If the value is changed to 0, neither thing will be displayed.

delayf1=1
delayinsert=1
delayscrolllock=1
delaynumlock=1

These settings represent the keys which CAPshift "slows down".  The keys that can be affected are:

F1
Insert
ScrollLock
NumLock

The default values are all 1 indicating that all four of the keys are affected -- so CAPShift "slows" all four of them.  If for some reason, you'd not like some or all of the keys to be slowed down, you can set the corresponding values to 0 instead of 1.  For example, if I didn't want my F1 key to be affected, I'd change the corresponding setting to 0:

delayf1=0

The remaining settings appear to have to do with the "Replace user chars" functionality of CAPshift.  If you don't use the functionality, my guess is that it is safe to leave the corresponding settings alone (or remove them).

BTW, I think that in order for any new settings to take effect, CAPshift may have to be exited once and then started again.

[janetb]

Dear ewemoa,

Many thanks for your time.....

Regarding Startup, http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/6085 had a number of incorrect 'answers'....:-)....For example, msconfig only allows you to check or uncheck the relatively few items listed---cannot add new items; and Start at bottom left has no Startup Folder in its menu (at least on my system)....I will just use one of my Autorun programs---I just thought most programs with settings allow you to do this within the program.....

I understood from the .ini file what the options are....just wasn't comfortable with making changes in that manner.....The item I was most interested in was "Replace user chars", which would be very useful to me if it does what I think it does.....

[ewemoa]

Regarding Startup, http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/6085 had a number of incorrect 'answers'....:-)

-janetb (April 12, 2010, 08:31 AM)

Oops -- sorry about that.

I just thought most programs with settings allow you to do this within the program.....

Aha.  Yes, that certainly sounds reasonable.  I don't believe CAPshift has this capability though.

The item I was most interested in was "Replace user chars", which would be very useful to me if it does what I think it does.....

I didn't figure out how to use this until just now.  Perhaps you already know, but for what it's worth, here's an example of using it (assuming CAPshift is running and has the default settings):

1. Open notepad or some other editor
2. Type the two letters a and e
3. Select them both
4. Hold down the CapsLock key until the menu pops up
5. Choose the "Replace user chars" menu item

If all goes well, the two letters should be replaced by a single character.

On a side note, I experimented with the settings for replacement and found the following sorts of things work too:

He=Helium
Silver=Ag
Hi=This is some longer text.  There is even more than one line..newline.Neat!

[janetb]

ewemoa wrote:
I didn't figure out how to use this until just now.  Perhaps you already know, but for what it's worth, here's an example of using it (assuming CAPshift is running and has the default settings):

1. Open notepad or some other editor
2. Type the two letters a and e
3. Select them both
4. Hold down the CapsLock key until the menu pops up
5. Choose the "Replace user chars" menu item

If all goes well, the two letters should be replaced by a single character.

On a side note, I experimented with the settings for replacement and found the following sorts of things work too:

He=Helium
Silver=Ag
Hi=This is some longer text.  There is even more than one line..newline.Neat!

If I just type 'ae', how does it know what I want it to replace the 'ae' with??

[ewemoa]

If I just type 'ae', how does it know what I want it to replace the 'ae' with??

-janetb (April 12, 2010, 09:47 AM)

I'm not sure I follow your question, but below are two attempts at answering how I understood your question:

Short answer:

I guess that CAPshift decides what to replace the 'ae' with by essentially examining what appears to the right of the equals sign in its settings file for the line that begins with:

ae=

The default settings file contains the section:

ae=æ
oe=œ
aa=å
AE=Æ
OE=Œ
AA=Å

and I guess that the first line would match if the selected characters were ae because the first line has ae to the left of the equals sign.  The ae is then subsequently replaced with æ -- or in other words, what appears to the right hand side of the equals line.

Much longer answer (warning: may require time and patience to read):

The settings file that CAPshift creates ends with what look like the following lines (actually it depends on which I application I use to view the settings file, but more on that in a bit):

ae=æ
oe=œ
aa=å
AE=Æ
OE=Œ
AA=Å

To get these lines to show up here on the forums, copying and pasting lines didn't work (the portions to the right of the equals signs appeared garbled) for me, so I did a search for what I thought were the proper characters at Wikipedia (e.g. æ).  Luckily, searching for ae (that's two characters) did eventually turn something up and I could see æ (one character) in my browser.  I tried copying and pasting that with fortunate successful results.  For reference, the Wikipedia page had a "See Also" section which listed the other characters so that was a time-saver.  Also, each of the individual Wikipedia pages listed both the lower case versions and the upper case versions.

On the computer I'm using at the moment, depending on the application I use to view the settings file, those lines appear different (e.g. Notepad here doesn't show those lines very nicely, whereas Notepad++ does display them nicely).  (I just noticed that I can view the settings file appropriately by dragging it on to a browser window (Firefox and K-Meleon handled it fine, though Internet Explorer asked me whether I wanted to save it).)  [1]

So back to the main point -- please recall the series of steps from before:

1. Open notepad or some other editor
2. Type the two letters a and e
3. Select them both
4. Hold down the CapsLock key until the menu pops up
5. Choose the "Replace user chars" menu item

As I understand it, once step 5 is performed, CAPshift does what amounts to the following sort of thing:

1. Examine which characters have been selected
2. If the selected characters contain matching sequences of characters as specified on the left hand side of the equals signs (from the relevant portion of the settings file), replace them with what appears to the right hand side of the equals sign (for the corresponding settings line).

So as an example, If I select the text:

ae oe

and use the replace user chars functionality, I get:

æ ø

I guess this is because ae matches the first of the relevant settings lines:

ae=æ

and oe matches the second relevant settings line:

oe=œ

Note that it appears that the order of the settings lines may make a difference.  When I tried the replace user chars functionality on:

aae

I got:

aæ

instead of:

åe

Perhaps CAPshift prioritizes for sequences that appear earlier in the settings file -- the settings line starting with ae= precedes the settings line which starts with aa=:

ae=æ
oe=œ
aa=å
AE=Æ
OE=Œ
AA=Å

I tested this by changing the order of the settings lines to:

aa=å
ae=æ
oe=œ
AE=Æ
OE=Œ
AA=Å

Subsequently using the replace user chars functionality on:

aae

yielded:

åe

instead of the original:

aæ

I hope at least some of that was useful -- if you have further questions on this matter, please mention it.


[1] I'm not sure why the results are different, but my suspicion is that it has to do with file encodings and the fact that the programming language which CAPshift is written in doesn't (yet) support the Unicode file encoding.  May be someone else can give an appropriate explanation of this

[janetb]

I really appreciate all your time and effort....:-)....! The general answer to my original question is that there is apparently no user GUI and that you have to do programming to set settings other than default...I guess I will just use it for the items on the menu....But thanks...!

[ewemoa]

Good luck with the program